UPDATES ON FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2011, DESERT BLOOM PHOENIX 4 & WEEKEND OF HORRORS
May 12 2011


Just posting a blog to catch everyone up with what's been going on of late. Last Saturday, I participated in Free Comic Book Day, a nation wide event where comic book stores host signings and art events by illustrators and comic creators to gain new readers and benefit The Hero Initiative, a charity benefitting comic creators who've had health battles by helping them with their medical costs. I did a bunch of cool zombie sketches, and a fun Black Widow and Green Lantern piece. If you want to check those out, check out my TwitPic Stream HERE for the images with the tag #FCBD. I dug the Blind Mag from REPO: The Genetic Opera a lot.

That night, I then did some live painting at Desert Bloom Phoenix 4. Here's some video of my painting which I later sold. Most people seemed to dig it, including the fact that it seemed to be an unintended shout-out to "The Dark Mark" from Harry Potter.



This weekend, I'll be in Los Angeles, vending at the Creation Entertainment Weekend of Horrors at the LAX Marriott. I'll be at Table #53, where I'll be doing live sketches and commissions. I'll also have some exclusive prints, such as this DEMONS piece. I should be pricing it at about $20.00.



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HISTORY OF MOVIE POSTER DESIGN at PHOENIX ART MUSEUM
May 05 2011


On May 3, 2011, I delivered a talk on the History of Movie Poster Design at the Phoenix Art Museum. About 10 months earlier I had delivered an earlier talk at Ignite Phoenix #7 on the Art of Exploitation Movie Posters; that talk was in Ignite format; 20 slides 15 seconds a slide with 5 minutes to talk. This was a much bigger time window and I could focus on a historical overview. So for this talk I focused on Poster Design as it sprang from advertising and focused on several masters of illustration and looked at design influces. In contrast with my Ignite talk, this one was also 20 slides, but ran about 45 minutes. The crowd of 120 present at Whiteman Hall seemed to really enjoy it and I received a lot of comments at the reception following. I think these talks could be something really interesting if focused on different areas on design and I'd like to find a venue/form to continue them in for the future.

Here's the original talk that started it all as well:



O'Reilly Media featured my original Ignite Phoenix #7 talk on Exploitation movie poster art on the official IGNITE channel on YouTube the week of February 23, 2011, so they did a lot of cool post production work on it, including making my slide graphics pop up along with my puns in that speech, as well as adding a timer at the bottom which shows you how IGNITE really works as it countsdown to when my next slide will move, its pretty cool and it'd be awesome if all Ignite talks had this nifty feature. I had to fix the sound because unfortunately IGNITE's version didnt have the good sound quality of the original, so this is the best of both worlds.



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IGNITE PHOENIX: AFTER HOURS - ZOMBIES AND OUR FASCINATION WITH THE DEAD
Jan 23 2011
Back in June of 2010, I presented at Ignite Phoenix 7 on The Art of the Movie Poster. Ignite Phoenix is a local event in Phoenix that lets people speak about things they are passionate about to get share that passion and motivate others to act on their own. You present in 5 minutes, with 20 slides running on auto-pilot behind you. Its a great experience and being a glutton for punishment, I went for it again.

In December of 2010, I was one of the initial presenters for Ignite Phoenix After Hours an R-Rated version of Ignite. In this event, I talked about how I illustrate zombies at comic book conventions and what motivates people to want to become the undead, here is that presentation:



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IGNITE PHOENIX 7 - THE ART OF THE MOVIE POSTER BY VICTOR MORENO
Jun 27 2010
My presentation from Ignite Phoenix #7 on June 11, 2010 at the Phoenix Art Museum entitled "The Art of The Movie Poster" - Hope you enjoy it!





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THOUGHTS ON PRESENTING AT IGNITE PHOENIX 7
Jun 20 2010



A few months ago, I attended my first Ignite Phoenix event at the Mesa Arts Center in Mesa, Arizona. The Ignite Phoenix format is very straightforward; each presenter gets a stage and a captive audience for 5 minutes with 20 slides at 15 seconds a slide to share information on any topic that is close to their heart. The slides proceed automatically, so the challenge in the format lays in conveying something you feel passionately about in a truncated easy-to-digest format. Along with giving anyone in attendance a basic primer on topics as diverse as what happens to your body when you die in Maricopa County to a detailed mapping out of the Star Wars expanded universe, Ignite brings diverse communities from across the Valley together to share in a virtual shuffle playlist of topics.

As a valley creative with a very diverse set of interests that I'm deeply passionate and knowledgeable about (and also being something of a ham), I was really interested in Ignite when I first heard about it prior to Ignite #6. I submitted a topic for that event which wasn't chosen, but that further lit a fire of determination under me to present at Ignite #7. I felt that I could do a really awesome job at it and once I set my mind to something, I tend to really fixate on making it happen. I submitted my topic, "The Art of The Movie Poster," hours after Ignite #6 ended and much to my surprise and delight, I was chosen to be a presenter at Ignite Phoenix 7 amongst 17 others from a field of 80+ submissions, giving me less than a month to create an engaging and entertaining presentation for the estimated 600 to 650 who would be in attendance.

Eek.

Now the challenge was how do I encapsulate a topic as broad as "The Art of the Movie Poster" in 5 minutes. Could I talk about the evolution of the lobby card from plays to the teaser for Toy Story 3 or The Twilight Saga: Eclipse you see in your local Harkins or AMC lobby? Maybe I could do a retrospective of one illustrator's career like Drew Struzan or John Alvin? Or maybe talk about the current floating heads and Trajan Pro/Futura Extra Heavy Photoshop monstrosities that plague current "key art"/poster design?



In the end, I went with something I felt I knew very well. I decided to theme my presentation around the evolution of the exploitation movie genre and the subsequent movie posters that really established it. This would allow for a narrative thread in my presentation, I could talk about cheesy yet memorable films like Reefer Madness - movies which if it were not for the over-the-top way they were marketed in their posters as salacious essays on the depravity of youth at the time would otherwise be completely forgotten and consigned to a dusty vault. I'm a tremendous film buff and these films hold a special place in my heart because the best ones have at their core a sincerity of purpose. These films werent meant to be bad cheesy films, it just happened that the technical skill and experience needed to execute the premise was lacking in some regard, but the flaws are what ultimately make the movie shine in one regard or the other - or at the very least make them memorable in some way.

I used the slideshow element of my Ignite Presentation to showcase a series of exploitation posters whose stories could be told fairly quickly - whether one was a foreign redubbing of a John Wayne tourism film for Hawaii that turned the Duke from a pencil pusher into a drug enforcement agent, to another that existed before the film it was advertising was even shot. I created the outline for the slideshow before I wrote my presentation and found that helped me in crafting a witty 5 minute presentation where I could riff on the background of the art design and yet still introduce some factual elements of the artist's techniques that would get the audience's attention, like how many illustrated posters are basically colored pencils over a thin acrylic paint base over a line drawing.

I also used a really deliberate way of presenting the posters I did chat about. I went out of my way to find really high resolution images of these posters and present them in a way that didn't mock them. Even if some of the films they were designed to market were of questionable societally redemptive value, these posters to me are art. They're artifacts that speak to a moment in history and share the story of that period. The background elements of each slide were derived from some of my own artwork. I create posters for repertory films screened for both the Midnite Movie Mamacita and the non-profit MADCAP Theaters and resurrected some of those retro-inspired poster designs for the poster-plastered backdrop seen throughout the slides in my Ignite presentation. Admittedly, one of the little things about the whole behind-the-scenes process was hearing from the Ignite Phoenix staff how much they dug the design of my slideshow, since I put a lot of myself and my work into it.

As the event drew closer, I found the most effective way to present was to let what I wanted to say come to me as I looked through my slides. I had a very solid idea of the narrative thread as I mentioned before and after going through the slideshow many times, I had a rough idea of what I wanted to say. I then practiced in Ignite format with Powerpoint pushing the slides along at 15 second intervals. Through practicing this way, I was able to finetune exactly what I wanted to say and time my delivery to certain key slides for educational, narrative and occassional comedic effect.

As the day of the event arrived, I got a chance to chat with my fellow presenters once we converged at the Art Museum and found our preparation processes were in many ways similar. It was really gratifying to have people to share this event that were in the same boat being first time presenters, mixed in with a few repeat presenters. The only trepidation as the curtain call drew closer was fear of tripping on the flimsy step to the stage which was later taped down and of blanking. However, as soon as I got on stage fresly micced up and after some encouraging texts from my friends, the talk flowed out of me. Ironically, the actual Ignite Phoenix presentation was the only time of all the times I practiced where I was spot on on all my timing queues, so even a few lines I had thrown away for running long got in since I didnt have to worry about being short for time. The crowd really got into my presentation and I hope I was able to entertain some of them enough to maybe check out some of the art books I had in my presenter's area and want to maybe see one of those B-movies via my 5 minute track on the Ignite shuffle of topics. Perhaps my talk might be one to get some other audience member to say, "hey, I could do that!" and submit their passion project up for a future Ignite event.

The event was everything I had hoped and I really want to thank Brian Carson, Jeff Moriarty, Matthew Petro, J.L. Knapp and the rest of the Ignite Phoenix crew of staff and volunteers for letting me be a part of the event . It was awesome and I would love to do it again.

For those in attendance who may be wondering a bit more about the posters I talked about or would like to see my slideshow again, here is a link so you can see all the slides and posters I chatted about HERE

Ignite Phoenix 7 Photos by azchrislee & moriartys on Flickr

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